How to be the modern football journeyman

Steve Claridge moved around a little.
Photo: PA
By Adam Hurrey
How to be a Journeyman

Ryan Giggs, Paolo Maldini, Tony Hibbert - there is much to admire about the one-club men, for whom moving away was occasionally an option but very rarely a worry. But there is plenty of alternative romance in a journeyman’s existence - either at the top of the ladder, the lowest rungs, or shifting endlessly between - to recommend it.

Traditionally, goalkeepers and strikers lend themselves best to a peripatetic career. Back-up keepers (especially those curious third-choicers) should always be on their specialist toes, like a 24-hour plumber, for the occasional emergency loan. Throw in the accepted wisdom that goalkeepers don’t reach their assured prime until at least their early 30s, and they develop a journeyman-friendly shelf-life. As for the strikers, they too can position themselves as a tool-for-hire for relegation-threatened sides struggling to find the net, and achieve career longevity purely through the undimming joy of scoring goals.

There’s little consensus for how many clubs constitutes a journeyman career - half a dozen seems a logical starting point - but there are plenty of ways of going about compiling one.
Ryan Tunnicliffe has moved around.
Ryan Tunnicliffe has moved around. Credit: PA
Be an ex-Manchester United starlet

There are, by some educated estimates, somewhere north of 100 former Manchester United youngsters plying their trade in the Football League, to whom we should refer by their full names - “Former Manchester United youngster Ryan Tunnicliffe”, for example, who has played for seven clubs before the age of 24. Like a decent set of A-Levels, it’s a rock-solid foundation for securing a new club repeatedly for the next fifteen years.

Chelsea’s infamous stack-them-high-loan-them-out policy should see them replenish the stocks of journeymen in the years to come. To cite but two case studies, Ryan Bertrand and Nathaniel Chalobah racked up fifteen loan spells between them before the former was finally sold and the latter was welcomed into Antonio Conte’s squad. The debate over the usefulness of multiple loan spells is for another time, but it certainly prepares the players for a journeyman existence if they choose it.
Peter Crouch
Peter Crouch had time at Villa Park. Credit: PA
Play for Aston Villa at some point

Maybe it’s sheer geography, maybe it was that mid-table security of the 1990s/2000s, but Villa have seemingly always been a busy interchange in the journeymen network for the upper reaches of the league.

Such are Villa’s inextricable ties with journeymanism that you often stumble across players who played for them and yet you have no memory of it (Peter Crouch, Robbie Keane) or convince yourself that others played for them when they simply did not (Nigel Martyn, Carlton Palmer, Darren Anderton, Danny Murphy, Mark Viduka, Dietmar Hamann, and many more.)

Relegation to the second-tier has perhaps served only to strengthen Villa’s status as a footballing waypoint, as the likes of Ritchie De Laet and Ross McCormack ponder their next move.
Cameron Jerome
Cameron Jerome is very much an up and down sort of player. Credit: PA
Be endlessly relegated and promoted

Yo-yo players carefully manage their reputations so that they’re somehow immune from both the boost of promotion and the blow of relegation.

The most frequent example is the too-good-for-the-Championship, not-good-enough-for-the-Premier-League striker, handed the task of firing a club into the top-flight but then jettisoned like NASA fuel tanks once orbit has been achieved. Your Dwight Gayles, your Glenn Murrays, your Abel Hernandezes, your Jordan Rhodeses, your Rudy Gestedes, your Ross McCormacks, your David Nugents - all, at one point or another, stuck in the Zone of Cameron Jerome.

Escape to Turkey

Handier for selling clubs than adventurous players, maybe. If you leave any unwanted Premier League players outside your front door, the Turkish league will pick them up and recycle them for you, twice a week.

Particularly useful for misfiring striker on whom a club wants to minimise their losses, with the player assured that they’re well on course for 20 goals for Besiktas. Alternatively, the Super Lig represents an exotic late-career test for a goalscorer unwilling to put themselves out to Middle East/MLS pasture: indeed, among the top-scorers last season were Samuel Eto’o, Hugo Rodallega, Robin van Persie and Lukas Podolski.

In any case, Turkey is a must-see for any globally-minded journeyman footballer.
David Bentley enjoyed Russia.
David Bentley enjoyed Russia. Credit: PA
Gamble on a Russian club

Perhaps more of a stepping-stone compared to Turkey’s end game. A season or two with whichever Moscow club you can find should be enough to get you in the shop window for a move to the soft belly of the Premier League, while the money makes the winters a little more bearable.
China
Get yourself to China. Credit: PA
Join the gold rush to China

The new holy grail for the deluxe journeyman. Among the gap-year Brazilian plodders who abandoned home years ago to seek their fortune in the eastern hemisphere, there is now a growing presence of genuine A-listers happy to spend a season in the Chinese Super League for unprecedented wages, safe in the knowledge that they can return to the European scene whenever they like after that.

Within a few years, any high-grade journeyman worth his salt will have a spell with Shanghai SIPG or Tianjin Quanjian under their belt. And, if that plan fails, there’s always a move to the Indian Super League to play alongside the likes of Helder Postiga, Florent Malouda, Aaron Hughes and a small army of Brazilians called Cafu (not that one), Eder (certainly not that one) and Lucio (not tha...actually it is that one.)
Last updated Wed 11 Jan 2017

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